P4E.143 The Best Safety Device is a Careful Man - Part 7

Construction Site Sign

A safe man is careful with: His eyes... (cont'd)

Your natural (fleshly) question might be "How does it make me unsafe to my spouse if I look at other women (real, magazine covers at the supermarket checkout line, billboards, Internet porn, etc.)? Isn't that her problem?"

It might help to think of it like this:

Let's say you own a car company. After much thought, negotiation and investment you enter into a contract with a car buyer named Bill. You will only make cars for Bill and he will only buy cars from you. He vows to be faithful and true.

You spend a lot of time with Bill and after a while you start to notice that Bill is looking out of the corner of his eye at cars other than the ones you make. Later there are obvious glances. Sometimes they are more than a glance. Every once in a while it's a sustained, head turning, eye popping leer. Bill doesn't seem to care if you are with him or not. You happen to see him in the supermarket. Unknown to him you watch as looks over all of the glossy magazines showing seductive images of other people's cars. It wouldn't surprise you if you found out that he was scouring the Internet for images of other cars.

Now, your contract with Bill requires your continuous, heavy investment. Do Bill's actions cause you to feel confident that Bill will continue to honor his contract with you? Or, does it cause you to hold back your investment? Does it make you put your guard up? Does it make you curious to know what's going on in his mind? Are you tempted to ask probing questions that go to his allegiance to you? Will his defense sound hollow when he tells you that his contract is with you and it doesn't mean he can't be looking at other cars? Finally, will it surprise you when he breaks his contract and jumps to another car maker?

Hope you see the parallel. I've known wives who would be considered beautiful by any man's standard who start to think that they are fat, ugly and too old when their men are looking at skinny, pretty, younger women. Many times, unknown to us, we send strong but unintended messages. All the more reason to be careful with what we look at.

Be safe, Kim

ps-I am participating in a project called 31 Days to Building a Better Blog. If you are interested, you can link here: http://blog.ourchurch.com/2010/05/11/31dbbb-day-7-write-a-link-post/#more-2071